The president of the European and Mediterranean Civilisations\u2019 Museum (MuCEM) in Marseille, Pierre-Olivier Costa, and his number two, the general manager V\u00e9ronique Hach\u00e9, have been suspended from their positions. The move comes two months after a report understood to detail rising discontent at the museum was submitted to the French culture minister Catherine P\u00e9gard, and three months after accusations of sexual and moral harassment were brought against Costa\u2014allegations he denies.<\/p>\n
P\u00e9gard announced Costa\u2019s departure on 30 June, explaining her decision was based on a wish to \u201cresume the social dialogue and restore a climate of trust in the museum\u201d. Anne-Marie Le Gu\u00e9vel, from the General Inspectorate of Cultural Affairs (IGAC), which presented the report, has taken over as MuCEM\u2019s interim president. Le Gu\u00e9vel arrived a day later in Marseille to announce to the staff that Hach\u00e9 was also suspended.<\/p>\n
The news came as a surprise as Costa is a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of the French president Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte. Costa was Brigitte Macron\u2019s chief of staff when he was hired by MuCEM in November 2022; before that, he had been an advisor to Macron and served on several bodies, including the Paris city council, the Centre Pompidou and the Centre national du cin\u00e9ma et de l’image anim\u00e9e (CNC). L\u00e9onore Branche, a representative of the leading union Sud, told The Art Newspaper that the news of Costa\u201ds suspension \u201cprovoked cries of joy in the offices\u201d.<\/p>\n
The six elected representatives of the MuCEM staffbase immediately \u201cwelcomed a decision\u201d to suspend Costa numerous, citing several actions that had taken place since 2023, \u201cincluding a day of strike\u00a0in June 2024 which was followed by two-thirds of the staff denouncing toxic management [in an open letter]\u201d. In March of this year, IGAC began its audit of the museum. The audit revealed rising tension and anxiety among the staff, says a ministry source.<\/p>\n
Also in March, MuCEM registered a complaint by an employee, now on medical leave, who alleges he was sexually and morally harassed by the director. Costa\u2019s lawyer, Marie Geoffroy, says that he denies any wrongdoing and has filed a complaint for “malicious accusation” against the employee who made the sexual misconduct allegations.<\/p>\n
The allegations were\u00a0forwarded to the local district attorney\u2019s office, who opened a preliminary criminal investigation in March. Geoffrey says that Costa has no knowledge of the criminal investigation and has not been interviewed by police. <\/p>\n
On 30 June, a local member of the French parliament, Hendrik Davi, pressed the district attorney to \u201cact swiftly, fearing that the matter could be hushed up due to the close ties of the director with the presidential couple\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Costa denied his suspension is \u201cin any way a sanction\u201d.\u00a0He also says that he \u201chad no access\u201d to the report submitted to P\u00e9gard.<\/p>\n
Officially, the suspensions are valid for a maximum of four months, leaving the pair time to prepare their defence, according to a source close to P\u00e9gard. <\/p>\n
However, Branche says \u201cthis is purely symbolic, as there is no way the staff would accept [their] return\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The president of the European and Mediterranean Civilisations\u2019 Museum (MuCEM) in Marseille, Pierre-Olivier Costa, and his number two,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1063645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3939],"tags":[4021,4020,86179,4022,77,10040,4842,16,15],"class_list":["post-1063644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-controversies","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-marseille","tag-museums-heritage","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116850205985215173","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1063644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1063645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1063644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1063644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1063644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}